Maintain pressure on reforms to protect NHSWork begins to end mixed-sex accommodation
The health secretary has announced plans to eliminate mixed-sex accommodation in hospitals across 200 health trusts in England.
A total of 700 projects are planned and work has already started on creating new bathrooms and partition walls to provide separate toilets and sleeping areas for male and female patients.
The move comes after the government pledged in January that any hospitals which failed to protect patients’ privacy from 2010/11 would be penalised financially, unless it could be ‘clinically justified’.
Much of the work under way is being funded by a £100 million ‘privacy and dignity fund’, which has been allocated to all strategic health authorities in England.
Around £40 million of the fund will be spent on new and refurbished same-sex sanitary facilities such as bathrooms, while the remaining money will be spent building separating walls, provision of same-sex lounges and improved partitions.
Health secretary Alan Johnson said: ‘We have made great progress, however our message is clear - over the coming months we only expect to see mixed-sex accommodation where it is clinically justified and from next year those trusts who fail in this duty will be financially penalised.’
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Readers' comments (2)
Anonymous | 7-May-2009 9:49 am
does anybody else think that this is just ridiculous? the whole issue of single sex wards has just been blown out of all proportion and is now just expensive political point scoring. Whats the plan? Are all hospitals going to have a male and female cardiology ward? a male and female respiratory ward? a male and female stroke unit? Could this money not be spent better?
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joseph mccaffery | 29-Jul-2009 5:12 pm
Joe Mc Caffery
This argument is; obviously, young and has some time to go. The topic though contentious and possibly inexhaustive, is relevant and timely.
Accepting that the Government has mandated that "this will be so" is sadly a reflection of the times, but to state that health care will be "penalised" where differences in ideology and application exist leaves me with nothing more than hollow feeling and an urge to remind myself that the day we handed care over to the people who have no understanding of the care concept, we sold our chickens to the fox.
Can we penalise the government if they won't do what we want?
Maybe it's about time we did!
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